By IANS
Srinagar : Thousands of angry villagers took to the streets in Jammu and Kashmir’s border district of Kupwara Saturday to protest the death of a school teacher who they allege had been killed by soldiers.
The protesters torched an army vehicle as well as a vehicle belonging to the local executive magistrate late Friday in Rawatpora village of the district in north Kashmir.
Nearly 5,000 villagers camped overnight outside the village mosque in Rawatpora where they had kept the body of schoolteacher Abdul Rashid Mir.
Relatives of Mir and villagers refused to bury him unless the guilty were brought to book.
Army sources described the teacher’s death as “unfortunate since he was killed in accidental fire”.
According to villagers, Mir would escort his female colleagues through a dense forest in the village and had been warned by troops deployed in the forest not to do so.
“The soldiers had threatened him of dire consequences if he disobeyed their orders. They had also snatched his identity card on Thursday,” one of the protesters alleged.
People claim some soldiers were trying to bundle Mir’s body into a vehicle Friday when villagers spotted them and took the body away.